Michael Adams Quotes

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

You can't forge a new sort of consensus, you can't forge public opinion, by following public opinion.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society.

Ideas appropriate to a past social order have a strange power of influencing thought and action within a later institutional framework.

Sociologically, large groups of people don't generally have massive changes in their belief instantaneously.

There are people in the world who have the power to change our values.

There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.

A lot of people can have a lot of different influences, everyone can be compared in some way to someone whether they are from 60 years ago or more recent.

Cultural standards evolve. The meaning of the public interest also, of course, evolves.

The worship of youth has diminished - perhaps generally - in recent years.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them.

I think in this, definitely, because you are feeling how it felt to live in a completely different time. The mannerisms and the way that people behaved was quite different.

You can find inspiration for man's behaviour wherever you look.

What goes for sex goes double for politics.

We have defined decency down.

Science of Society

The question is the propriety of how we go about influencing and changing behavior.

What we try to do is represent public opinion—and public opinion is anti oral sex.

Culture is more important than politics.

The laws of a country are a reflection of the values of the people.

Things that used to be illicit are not illicit today. Licit products of yesterday, may be illicit today.

The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilized society.

There are different groups of people in your life that you behave slightly differently with. You behave one way with your family. You behave in a different way with your work colleagues. You behave differently with your friends from the movie club, your fitness instructor - all subtly different personas.